“The architecture industry is increasingly having an impact on the built environment’s energy efficiency and carbon emissions. The main vehicle: the AIA 2030 Commitment program.” Each year, the AIA releases a report on the 2030 portfolio’s progress, and the most recent Progress Report is now available for review.
From the report:
- The reality check is that eleven years after Architecture 2030 summoned architects “and other building professionals to make carbon-neutral buildings by 2030, the average project in the AIA 2030 Commitment predicts energy use intensity savings of around 38 percent.”
- The clear choice for firms that want to keep pace with Commitment goals involves becoming expert at creating and reading energy models. If architects don’t reverse carbon emissions’ growth around the world, future practice and design will evolve amid a swirl of increased drought, floods, wildfires, human upheaval, and shocks to the world economy (U.S. Global Change Research Project, 2014.)”
- “Getting to 70 percent reductions in predicted energy use intensity (pEUI) demands creativity both in what we design, and how early we bring energy considerations and iterative design into the process.”
Bottom Line: “The building industry is not on track to meet the goal of designing only carbon-neutral projects by 2030.” But there is good news. It is predicted that the energy saved by the projects included in this report “totals 21 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions.” And according to the EPA, that is “the equivalent of powering 2.2 million houses in a year.”
Download the progress report here.
